Birthing Beautiful Ideas

Some days, the kids really kick my ass.

I mean sledge-hammers over the head, sucker-punches to the gut, I-will-melt your-brain-into-Gruyere-and-neuron-fondue ass-kicking.

All you parents out there have those days, right?

Right.

Today’s ass-kicking was a byproduct of teething (the work of the devil, I tell you) and potty-training (the work of a choir of SAINTS).

Mixing those two is kind of like mixing bleach and ammonia.  EXCEPT THEY’RE MORE TOXIC!!!

Seriously dudes and dudettes, I think I actually ended up sporting a Jack-Nicholson-from-The-Shining-esque grin on my face today after trying for two fa-reakin’ hours to get my two overtired kids down for two too-much needed naps.

Whining reached all-time highs, meltdowns reached all-time emotional lows, and ways of expressing frustration or sadness or exhaustion reached exasperating levels of weirdness.

(Yeah, if I haven’t mentioned it before, A likes to LICK things–like carpet, walls, toys, etc.–when he is upset.  It’s bizarre.)

And I was all like, “WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO OPEN UP MY SKULL SO THAT YOU CAN DIP SOURDOUGH IN MY BRAIN-MELT, MY LOVELIES?”

So by 5:45 p.m., when the proverbial fondue was bubbling out of my eyeballs, I started crying.  I just sat down on the couch and sobbed, and when M (four-years-old) asked me what was wrong, I just said that “sometimes it’s really, really hard to be a mommy.”

And both kids lumbered up on the couch next to me, M covering my legs with a blanket, A wiping away my tears, and I was all like, “SERIOUSLY?!  All I had to do was bring out the WATERWORKS to get you kids to calm down?!”

(Don’t worry, I didn’t diminish the moment by saying those words out loud.  I kept ‘em deep inside the mushy, squishy contents of my skull.)

Once upon a time, there was a little kid who would eat most anything put on his plate.  Anything.

Black bean chili?  Curried chickpeas and tomatoes?  Berry medley?  Couscous with steamed carrots, broccoli, and spinach?

Bring it, baby, this kid liked good food.

Once upon a time, this kid also had a mother who had the really stupid idea that kids were only picky because their parents didn’t offer them enough of a variety of foods.

Ha.

Haaaaa haa.

Yeah, she was a first-time parent with all sorts of first-time-parent lofty (and misguided) ideas, so cut her some slack.

(I’ll stop talking about my hypothetical, third-person self…now.)

I don’t know where it all started, but somewhere along the line, M (who is now four years old) gave up on veggies.  Just…gave up.  Refused to eat them.  Refused to allow a single one of them (with the exception of plain steamed broccoli) to even grace his plate.  Thought they were the devil.  That they tasted like dog poo.  And all that anti-veggie jazz.

Without turning mealtime into an all-and-out battle (’cause I don’t happen to think that’s a healthy way to prepare a person for a lifetime of eating), Tim and I did try the occasional “bribe.”  (Here, kiddie, kiddie, here’s a cookie for just three bites of that spinach!)

We tried “reasoning.”  (Yes.  We tried reasoning with the kid who can fire back with this.)

We even tried pureeing roasted yellow peppers and/or carrots and “hiding” them in the melted cheese of his quesadillas and grilled cheese.  (Funny thing, those veggies.  Kids can actually taste them.)

(As an aside, I should mention that M’s diet still includes some healthy foods.  The kid can eat his weight in channa masala, black beans and rice, and blueberries.  And while he enjoys the occasional chicken nugget, he’s not going to “turn into one,” as the saying goes.  But I have this strange fascination with making sure that my kids get their veggies, even if they get lots of vitamins and minerals through their daily multivitamin.  I dunno, perhaps I’m weird that way.)

In any case, when bribery, reasoning, and hiding didn’t work, I resorted to the bottom of the barrel: trickery.

One morning, I peeled a sweet potato, sliced it into 1/4 inch circular slices, set them out on a cookie tray coated with cooking spray, drizzled some olive oil over them, sprinkled some brown sugar on the tops, and baked them for 15-25 minutes at 400F.

And that was the morning that M thought he had died and gone to heaven when he got to eat a dozen cookies for breakfast.

And I laughed all the way to the vitamin A bank.

Sometimes we even put sprinkles on top of the "cookies!"

A few days ago, M asked me what the word ‘damage’ meant.

Now, M’s an inquisitive four-year-old who loves books and who wants to know the meanings of the words in those books, so I thought nothing of his request.  I offered up some synonyms (like ‘harm’ and ‘hurt’) and gave a few examples (like that awning at the Easton Town Center doing damage to our car) and then sent him off with a new member of his vocabulary.

And then I heard him use the word.

It was after A (nineteen months) had knocked down one of M’s recent  block creations.  And upon seeing his blocks crumble to bits, M exclaimed, ”Oh, DAMAGE, A!  My tower!”

Yep.  The exact same intonation that I use when I say the word “damnit.”

It certainly wasn’t one of my proudest parenting moments.  Obviously, I had said a big bad word in front of my kid (perhaps on numerous occasions), and he was now repeating it (or at least he was repeating what he thought I had said).

But I also don’t think it was a moment of absolute parenting failure either.  I mean, M and I still had a talk about how grown-ups sometimes say “angry words” when they are upset, and these words aren’t always nice words, so we grown-ups should be more careful about using “angry words” and should try to use other words instead when we’re upset, words like ‘thunderbugs’, which up until the DAMAGE was done had been M’s favorite exclamatory word.

Was that all clear?

In any case, I do believe that this was only a minor transgression on my part, and no transgression at all on M’s part.  We’ll live and learn, and Mommy will try harder not to mutter “damnit” under her breath when her toddler dumps his lunch off of the high chair for the gazillionth time, and M will resort back to saying “thunderbugs” when the world throws him a curveball.

But so often, I find that people think that parents have REALLY FUC…I mean REALLY MESSED UP when their kids say bad words.  As if these words represent the worst possible smelling shi…I mean poop that has ever spewed from a person’s mouth.

I think back to when I was a kid, and it always seemed that BAD WORDS would get you in REALLY BIG trouble.  Like, they were the WORST words.  The absolute WORST.

Let one of those words slide on the playground, and you got to go and “stand on the wall” (which back in elementary school meant standing next to the school building and facing the bricks for half-and-hour, not that I would know anything about that).

Let ‘em slide at home, and you got sent straight to your room.

Let ‘em slide in the classroom, and you got sent to the principal’s office.

Parents would be notified (and perhaps judged), punishments would be meted out, and stern voices would be raised.

There always seems to have been such moral outrage over those instances where kids (unwittingly) repeat the bad words the adults in their lives may have said, even when these words get uttered in pretty benign (i.e. no name-calling, no ill will, etc.) circumstances.  BECAUSE THEY ARE THE WORST WORDS.

Except they aren’t.

I don’t believe I’m alone in thinking that the REAL WORST WORDS that kids can use–that anyone can use–are the mean words: the taunting and teasing and bullying words, the words that spew forth shitstorms of cruelty to other people. 

And I don’t want my kids to be mistaken about this.

I don’t want them to use “bad words,” but I also want them to see my fiercest word-related moral outrage appear over mean words–not curse words.

Because making fun of the way another kid throws a ball?

Calling another person “fat” or “stupid” or “smelly”?

Resorting to name-calling or general mean-words when things don’t go their way?

Damnit, that’s where the real damage is done.

On my 29th birthday, I posted a list of 29(+) accomplishments I hoped to tackle before turning thirty.

Within hours of creating that post, I was able to cross one of those accomplishments off of my list.

I took the kids on more sled rides than I did last year.

(If only all of my to-do lists could be met with so little procrastination and so much fun.)

Last Thursday marked the second day that I took the kids sledding this year, which means that I have already taken them sledding more than I did last year.

And I think they enjoyed it.

tandem sledding

In fact, I think they enjoyed their afternoon of being pulled around on the sled by Mom even more than they enjoyed the mega-watered down hot cocoa that I offered to them after our fun-yet-frigid adventure.

(Yes, I gave a nineteen-month-old watered down hot cocoa.  Oh the humanity!  And it wasn’t even organic!)

And I think we’ll do it again.  (Well, maybe not the hot cocoa.  I think that stuff was laced with PCP.  Or at least that’s the effect it had on my kids.)

Because welcoming the snow with the joy of a child is so much better than whining about it, right?

For the most part, I am the family cook.

It’s a job that I took on well before the kids were born, back when Tim and I were first divvying up house chores.

And it’s a job that I enjoy, though I won’t deny the fact that it has become more difficult since my children were born.  For besides the obvious fact that parenting simply takes up a whole lot of time that once could have been devoted to leisurely and/or hours-long meal preparation, my kids (at ages four and nineteen months) have developed discriminating palates and sensitive digestive tracts that prevent me from preparing whatever the hell I want to each night.

Put more simply, I think I face a lot of the meal-prep difficulties that many family cooks face.

For example: three of M’s favorite foods are black beans, blueberries, and blackberries, yet the three foods that often give A the worst diaper rash are black beans, blueberries, and blackberries.

Or then there’s the fact that the only vegetable that M will eat (when it’s not “hiding” in a soup or a smoothie) is broccoli, while the only vegetable that A won’t eat is (you guessed it) broccoli.

And then there are those days where A despises pasta even though (or perhaps because?) he ate three helpings of it the day before, or those days where M wants nothing, and I mean nothing, other than peanut butter sandwiches.

There is one meal, however, that pleases all four regular diners at our table. 

It’s almost embarrassingly simple, but it’s also healthful and filling. 

Black beans and rice.

black beans and rice night

Yep.  Black beans and rice.

Steamed rice + a can of black beans.

Does it get more simple than that?

It’s a meal I can throw together in minutes, yet it doesn’t contain any food that has been shaped into a nugget or deep-fried into oblivion.

I chop an avocado here, slice an onion and a tomato there, shred some cheese and/or some chicken, set out some salsa and perhaps some spices (and reserve some plain rice and veggies for our black-bean sensitive child) and I have a meal that is surprisingly nutritious, especially considering that one of its main ingredients comes from a can.

And the fact that it takes mere minutes to prepare and is a relatively healthy way to feed myself and my family?

That’s something that makes this family cook pretty darn pleased.

In the past few days, two recent conversations have gotten my mind venturing beyond Christmas and house-guests and struggling to get two overtired and overexcited children to bed when all they really, really want to do is take one more hit of the Christmas Spirit and ride out the high until way-past-bedtime o’clock.

One was a real-life discussion with a real-life friend, and the other was an online discussion over at The Feminist Breeder’s blog.  And both discussions (like many great ones elsewhere) revolved at least in part around kids, toys, gender, and feminism.

I’ve probably mentioned a couple (hundred) times that I have two kids–M (4) and A (19 months).  They are biologically male, or, as I like to abbreviate, boys.  (They also have full names, but I’m sort of protective of their identities because when you write about riding crops, vaginal birth, inverted nipples, and funny stories involving hernias, you get some REALLY WEIRD PEOPLE searching for REALLY WEIRD THINGS to get to your blog.)

In any case, for the most part I’ve tried not to assume much of anything about my kids based on the simple fact that they arrived on the planet with male sex parts. 

I’ve tried not to assume that they are inherently “more aggressive” than their female playmates.

I’ve tried not to assume that they are hard-wired to like playing with dump trucks and cars and to dislike playing with dolls and toy kitchens. 

And I’ve tried not to assume that their particular ways of playing are specifically boy ways of playing.

These efforts aren’t simply a matter of trying to practice feminist parenting.  For in addition to wanting my parenting to be informed by my feminist values, I also want the decisions I make as my kids’ mother to be informed by my very real respect for my children.

For just as I “listened” to my children’s needs when they were infants–when they needed to nurse, when they needed to cuddle, when they needed to sleep, etc.–I’m trying to listen to their interests and unique personalities as they grow older.  And part of that effort involves making a conscious effort to “de-gender” their interests and ways of playing.

My four-year-old son, for instance, has an enormous verbal strength and loves to arrange and organize and “make up movies and plays” with his toys.  Sometimes he’s setting up an array of pirates in his pirate ship, other times he’s talking about his love of ocean animals, and still other times he’s “making up movies” about fairies and unicorns. 

My 19-month-old son, on the other hand, tends to favor more physical play that involves building and constructing and using tools.  Sometimes he’s playing with the plastic hammer and drill at the kids’ workbench, other times he’s pretending to use a vacuum cleaner or a broom, and still other times he’s playing with my make-up brushes. 

As I see it, M and A’s general interests and ways of playing seem devoid of any gender-stereotypical significance.  Sure, the objects they play with are often associated with “girls’ toys” or “boys’ toys.”  The objects represent socially constructed gender roles and they illuminate the various socially constructed gender cues that send little boys (and their parents) down the TRUCKS AND WAR GAMES aisle and little girls (and their parents) down the VOMIT-OF-PINK-PRINCESSES-AND-PONIES aisle at the toy store.

But as I see with my own kids, a boy who loves arranging and organizing can do so with pirates and fairies, and a boy who loves playing with tools can do so with a toy hammer and with his mom’s make-up brushes.

My own boys have ways of playing that they like and prefer, and I try to give them the space and freedom to explore these ways of playing with lots of different objects, whether or not they are traditionally associated with “boys’ toys”

And allowing them to be themselves in this way is one of the best things I can do to respect who they are and what they like.

There are countless barriers to breastfeeding in the United States and other countries, but one that I don’t often see addressed often is the disjointedness of breastfeeding-related care.

In fact, for most women giving birth in the US, there is no continuity of care when it comes to breastfeeding.

And because of this, I think that woman who plan to breastfeed their babies (or who would breastfeed their babies if given accurate information) get ”lost in the lactation shuffle.”  They find themselves swimming in a sea of individuals who a) have jobs in which they give pregnant women and new mothers advice and information about breastfeeding but b) most likely do not communicate with one another about breastfeeding in general and about specific women’s breastfeeding needs in particular and c) have varying levels of breastfeeding expertise.

For instance, a birthing woman in the United States will most likely encounter the following breastfeeding-related care providers throughout her pregnancy and postpartum period:

• The nurse(s) in her OB-GYN or midwife’s office
• Her OB-GYN or midwife
• Her labor and delivery nurse(s)
• Her postpartum nurse(s)
• An in-hospital lactation consultant
• Her child’s pediatrician

And notably, with the exception of the lactation consultant, none of these care-providers are trained in treating and addressing all issues related to breastfeeding.  Some are trained to treat the mother, some the newborn.  Some are trained to discuss breastfeeding prenatally and in the immediate postpartum period, while others have further expertise in offering treatment and advice throughout the later stages of breastfeeding.

With such a disjointed “system” of breastfeeding support, I think that it is often the case that many women with resolvable breastfeeding problems (such as most issues related to latch, positioning, supply, tongue-tie, pumping, inverted nipples, and even those issues related to a misunderstanding about the benefits of breastfeeding) do not receive the right help at the right time and/or from the right person.

For example, a woman who may have benefited from discussing the health and financial advantages of breastfeeding during her prenatal appointments  may not hear about those advantages until she learns about them from her labor and delivery nurse, after which she has already decided to feed her baby formula.

A new mother who could have developed a strategy (in conjunction with her OB-GYN or midwife) for breastfeeding with inverted nipples may not even learn that she has inverted nipples until her postpartum nurse identifies them.

A woman recovering from a cesarean section might not learn about the football hold (a position which helps to relieve pressure on a tender incision site) until she meets the in-hospital lactation consultant, who might not be available until the day after her baby is born.

A new mother who begins formula-feeding her newborn after her obstetrician incorrectly informs her about the nutritional and immunological value of colostrum may not learn about how important it is for newborns to receive colostrum until she speaks with her pediatrician days after her child’s birth.

Moreover, even if a woman seeks additional assistance with nursing, either during pregnancy or after the birth of her child, she must wade through yet another sea of breastfeeding professionals and advocates, such as:

• A breastfeeding class instructor (such as a lactation educator or lactation consultant)
• A WIC peer counselor
• Her doula
• An independent lactation consultant
• Her local La Leche League leaders

What’s more, the above-mentioned individuals are often only available to women who have the means, the time, the knowledge, and the access to seek additional breastfeeding support.

Finally, in addition to birth professionals, lactation consultants and educators, doulas, and other breastfeeding advocates, new moms must also filter through the advice given to them by friends, family, spouses, partners, and even strangers, whose breastfeeding support (or lack thereof) can have a significant impact on one’s attempts to begin and continue breastfeeding.

I suspect that having a “thread” to connect the dots between all of the breastfeeding-related care providers and advocates would help not only to increase the numbers of women who choose to breastfeed but also to assist those women who want to and can breastfeed but do not receive the proper continuous support. 

Sometimes doulas can function as this sort of “thread,” giving breastfeeding information to women in the prenatal period, offering support with latch and positioning in the immediate postpartum period, and being available for questions and referrals in the later postpartum period.

Other times, knowledgeable family members or friends can also take up this role.

But not everyone has access to these individuals.

So in my ideal world, there would be someone in all OB-GYN and midwives’ offices who could meet with women prenatally and postnatally to discuss, troubleshoot, and support a mother’s breastfeeding efforts. 

Someone who could refer women to lactation consultants, educators, doulas, and breastfeeding support groups when needed.

Someone who could talk about the benefits of breastfeeding well before a woman gives birth.

Someone who could respectfully support mothers who choose to formula feed, including (and perhaps especially) those who planned on and wanted to breastfeed.

Someone who would be able to communicate with in-office nurses and OB-GYNs and midwives and labor and delivery nurses and postpartum nurses and lactation consultants and doulas.

Someone whose services would be included in the prenatal and postnatal care that a woman is already receiving. 

Available.  Accessible.  And continuous.

Wouldn’t it be nice?

I had always expected the sleep deprivation of the newborn weeks. 

I knew enough about babies even before I had children of my own to know that one of the best ways to navigate the newborn stage was to surrender to the sleeplessness and the fatigue and  the pajama-clad days.  To surrender to our baby and to the brand new life that we were forging for ourselves.  To tolerate and even come to enjoy the extended nursing sessions, the 2 a.m. blow-out poops that Tim and I eventually learned to handle with our eyes half-closed, and the hours upon hours of holding our helpless, precious baby. 

And then there were the months of late-night infant-feeding.  Those quiet moments wrapped up in blankets and shadows where I could cuddle my baby and nurse him back to sleep.  Those nights where the interruptions in my sleep were special, almost magical.

I had expected those mildly sleep-depriving nights as well, and I treasured the tranquil bond they afforded to my sons and me.

But (and here’s where this blog post takes a surprising turn), I do not ever and will not ever and do not ever condone anyone who finds pleasurable or magical or enjoyable those mornings where my or any other children decide to wake up for good at 3:30 a.m.

It’s cruel.  And unusual.  And it certainly feels like punishment.  (And I’m looking straight at you, my deranged little toddler.)

What’s especially disconcerting is that after the newborn era and the regular nightly nursing sessions, one comes to expect a certain amount of restful sleep each night.  One expects to wake up at a predictable hour (say, after the sunrise), and one even expects a few early wakings (say, just before the sunrise).

But 3:30 in the morning?  3:30 in the ridiculously early morning?!

It’s so ridiculous that my brain hurts just trying to think about it!  And I’m not really even thinking about it!  I’m just trying!

So now, I’m walking around all morning like a drunken seven-year-old and making statements like:

“Please!  Don’t jump the duice from your strawberries on your lap!”

“Hey, let’s keep your bottom on the table so that you don’t fall off your chair.”  (M proceeds to get a wicked gleam in his eye as he thinks I have just given him permission to play on top of the kitchen table.)

(Spoken to my own mother): “Mommy, thanks for making coffee this morning.”

(After a quesadilla I’m preparing for my three-year-old somehow sprouts legs, leaps high into the air, and makes a death-defying plunge toward the kitchen floor): “FIVE SECOND RULE!  FIVE SECOND RULE!  You can still eat it!  I swear!”

“You’re doing such a great job of taking your clothes on…I mean putting your clothes off…oh, whatever, you know what I mean.”

It’s days like these where even a giant-sized styrofoam cup of brown sludge from the gas station sound like a big slice o’ heaven to me.

I’m proud to say that I’m teaching my kids their manners.

You know, the basic ones, like ”please and thank you,” “you’re welcome,” “excuse me” (which I will address momentarily), etc.

And my reasons for doing this have little to do with caring about what’s “proper.”  I, for one, am pretty much a slug when it comes to all things proper, and I am ten shades of horrible when it comes to etiquette.

Nor do I care at all about teaching my kids to be deferential toward adults.  Of course, I want my kids to listen to an adult when s/he has their health, safety, and general well-being in mind (*ahem* like ME, darling children).  But I certainly don’t want to instill in my children the idea that they are somehow lesser persons or are less deserving of respect than adults are.

In fact, the reason that I do care about teaching my kids to say their “please and thank yous” and so on is that I want to instill in them a respect for all people–adults and other children alike.  And my hope is that this respect and gratitude and kindness and whatnot will translate into some pretty awesome grown-up versions of my kids some day.

Now, before you go thinking, “Oh JAYSUS, is this lady trying to nominate herself for parent-of-the-year or something?!” please think again.

As I was on the phone with my sister yesterday, our children interrupted us a couple of times in the manners-infused way they’ve been taught.

With a polite “excuse me” to introduce their interruption.

On my end, these interruptions were mainly filled with the sorts of questions that are only meant to communicate, “Mommy!  You’ve been on the phone for fifteen seconds already!!!  Get off the phone!  It’s time to talk about apple juice, poop, and dragons again!!!” 

You know, questions like, “Um…EXCUSE ME…um…Mommy…um…um…is it sunny out today?” while the kid is standing right next to an open window through which sunlight is pouring and shining upon said child’s little angelic head.

Or, “EXCUSE ME, Mommy, you’re a PEANUT-BUTTER HEAD!!!!  Ahahahahahahahaha!!!”

Nonetheless, I heaved a little motherly sigh to my sister and said, “Well, at least we’ve taught them to say ‘excuse me,’ right?  At least they have good manners.”

And she said, “Yeah, but I think that the ‘excuse me’s’ even get old and annoying after a while, don’t you think?  It’s just not like those other manners words.”

And I paused for a moment.  And then I said, ever so quietly, “Yes.  They are kind of like tiny little needles piercing your eardrums.  Especially when you’re trying to get something done.  Can’t we just find some sort of manner that represents the whole, ‘Please sit down and stay silent for a few moments so that Mom can drink her coffee and get her gab on with her sister’?  Or at least a, ’Hey!  This little box pressed against my ear does not mean that you have to stop playing with your toys and tug at my shirt until I’ve stopped to hear you call me a peanut-butter head!’?”

But instead, I stopped to endure the indignity of patient peanut-butter heads all over the globe.  And I confirmed that, yes, it was sunny outside.  (And I also inserted a few, “Why don’t you work on this puzzle here for a few minutes while Mommy talks to your aunt!  Please!  Thank you!  YOU’RE WELCOME!  EXCUSE ME!  POLITENESS EXPLOSION!”)

Because I’m afraid that if I act like a jackass to them, they might internalize some of that jackassery and not grow up to be awesome grown-up versions of themselves some day.

And I please, pretty please, would not like that.

Thank you very much.

As I was checking my Twitter updates a couple days ago, I noticed that one of my friends–a unbelievably talented feminist philosoper living in NYC–tweeted about how she had recently scored tickets to an invite-only Blondie show at the Brooklyn Museum.

Of course I was immediately struck by an all-consuming (though good-natured) envy, so I tweeted back expressing said good-natured envy (as “Hanging on the Telephone” began playing in the soundtrack of my mind). 

And my friend responded with a comment about how the invitation encouraged attendees to wear “rock n roll attire.”  (I’m not exactly sure what that means, given the many permutations of “rock n roll” attire.  Although I’m guessing they didn’t mean an Elvis jumpsuit.  THOUGH THAT WOULD BE AWESOME, DEAR FRIEND-IN-NYC!!!)

In any case, I tweeted back, ”HA! I used to have some badass silver tights that I wore back when I was in a band.”

And then I basked in a few mental images of me as a pseudo-rocker chick from years past.  (It was nothing special.  But it did leave me with some good “cool cred” for when my future teenagers accuse me of being “uncool” some day.)

And then I looked down at what I was wearing.

Sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt.  And slippers.  With a big freakin’ hole in the left toe.  At 3 in the afternoon.

The veritable uniform of the frazzled stay-at-home parent.

Now, I feel the need to highlight a few caveats to that statement, and one is that I know that not all frazzled stay-at-home parents live in their sweats.  Some of you parents (like my younger sister) have impeccable senses of style and whatnot and can make what would appear to be a bulky brown paper sack on me look like couture on you.  And I hate love you for that.

What’s more, I have nothing against parents (or non-parents, for that matter) who choose sweatpants, ratty t-shirts, and slippers as their outfit of choice.  And that’s primarily because these outfits are the garment equivalent of the world’s largest chocolate, peanut-butter, whipped cream, cherry-on-top ice cream sundae. 

But to me, what was especially disheartening about my attire at the time of the aforementioned twitter-conversation was not only the fact that I was so un-rock-n-roll at the time but also the fact that I was only wearing those sweatpants because of an unfortunate potty-training incident that had left a giant urine stain on the jeans I had been wearing earlier in the day.

Which then left me thinking the following:

I’ve been peed upon, I’ve caught pretzely throw-up in my bare hand, I’ve stepped in half-chewed pasta, I’ve awoken to the pre-dawn cackles of a teething toddler, and I’ve had one or two very short people watch me poop for the past few days.

My outfit just seemed to exacerbate the indignity of those events, especially when juxtaposed with the thought of donning some “rock n roll attire” and heading out to a rock show.

And so I thought, “Where have you taken my dignity, dear children?!  Why can’t I just look down and see that I’m wearing some colorful, flattering get-up straight out of the Anthropologie catalogue?  (Not exactly a catalogue of rock n roll attire, but definitely one that’s chock full of clothes-I’d-love-to-afford-and-wear.)

But then I took a closer look at the shirt I was wearing.  It was, in fact, a shirt I wore to rock concerts all the time when I was in high school.  Including one very fantastic Sonic Youth show I saw in the mid-90’s.   Which was, incidentally, just a couple years after Kim Gordon had given birth to her and Thurston Moore’s daughter, Coco.   When she was the parent of a toddler.

And even though I was only 16 (and childless) at the time, I remember thinking as I passed her on the street before the show (in addition to thinking, “OH MY GOD, it’s KIM GORDON!!!), “Wow, she is one rockin’ mama.  I hope I can rock that much when I’m a mom some day.”

And I don’t.  I never will.  I mean, who out there rocks as hard as Kim Gordon?

photo by Anders Jensen-Urstad

But instead of basking in my former pseudo-rock-chick days or drowning in the indignity of the aforementioned parenting events, my memory of my sorta-one-degree-of-separation from Kim Gordon reminded me that I can always get my RAWK on on the inside.

Even when I’m frumpy on the outside.

(Oh yeah, and I also just won a digital download of one of Rockabye Baby!’s Lullaby Renditions from The Feminist Shopper–a GREAT giveaway and review site–so that will add an extra dollop of rock to my day.  As I sit here typing.  In my sweatpants.  And ratty sweater.  And, this time, penguin socks with holes in the toes.)